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But sluts/not sluts isn’t the point!

On Thursday, radio anchor Leeann Tweeden came forward and claimed that Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) forcibly kissed her and groped her while she was asleep during a USO Tour in the Middle East in 2006. While most sane people were utterly disgusted by these allegations (which had photographic evidence to boot), some on the left took a slightly more problematic approach: Hey, did you know that Tweeden posed nude in magazines, likes guns, and is a conservative?

First of all, who cares? It doesn’t matter whether Tweeden modeled for Playboy or modeled in a full burka for a different magazine. She has the right to make that choice, and she exercised her agency in making that choice. Posing nude is not an invitation for people to make their way with someone without their consent. She did not want to be kissed by Franken, and she was asleep when he was photographed groping her breasts. She had no choice in the matter. More.

I am not questioning Tweeden’s right to sell whatever she wants. I am saying that if she is indeed selling that kind of thing, she is part of the same industry as Al Franken.

She is not, say, a night nurse in an ER, tending to banged-up low-lifes.

I am sick and tired of endless faux reruns of the Perils of Pauline. Any woman who goes into the entertainment business today will, of course be asked to market sex. Absent legal considerations, it’s a business transaction what she will do, with whom, to whom, and under what circumstances.

If women in entertainment don’t like that, they could try taking stand for old-fashioned morality.

Hey, don’t let the cobwebs strangle you while you are waiting…

I hope the moral panic ends some time soon so we can focus on the problems of women who, like the ER night nurse, genuinely have no reason to expect or put up with lewd behaviour of any kind.

Hospitals are not, after all, marketing lewd behaviour the way the entertainment industry does.

See also: Al Franken and Roy Moore: Can we get back to reality some time soon?